Killer Richard Greist again argues for freedom

WEST CHESTER – Richard Greist, who killed his wife in a psychotic rage 35 years ago, believes there is a conspiracy to keep him involuntarily committed to Norristown State Hospital without reason, it was disclosed at his annual mental health status hearing Thursday.

He blames doctors at the hospital, the prosecution, and court and mental health officials of keeping him from living in the outside community, and of inventing false reasons to keep him inside, according to testimony in Common Pleas Court.

The hearing, at which the hospital once again petitioned the judge overseeing Greist’s case to recommit him for another year, marked Greist’s return to the courtroom after a year’s absence, and the first time that he has represented himself during the proceedings.

Greist, 62, believes that his conduct on and off the grounds of the state hospital that has been his home for more than three decades has shown he would be capable of being released and allowed to live unrestricted in the community. Hospital officials, on the other hands, believe he needs to continue to stay there, getting regular psychiatric treatment, for fear that he would revert to the psychotic state he suffered from when he killed his wife.

And revelations at the hearing about Greist’s attitude toward his continued commitment show a new assertiveness on his behalf to win discharge that has escalated over the past 12 months.

Under questioning by the prosecutor from the Chester County District Attorney’s Office assigned to participate in the hearing before Common Pleas Judge Edward Griffith, Greist’s treating psychiatrist at the hospital read a Feb. 11 letter Greist and his third wife wrote explaining their opposition to the court hearings involving his commitment.

The pair, in saying that Greist would not appear at the hearing Thursday, referenced what they called a pattern of “collaboration, corruption, and collusion” among the state Department of Public Welfare, the county Mental Health department, the courts, the District Attorney’s office, and Norristown to keep him from being discharged.

“Does this indicate that Mr. Greist believes that there is a conspiracy against him … to keep him locked up?” Deputy District Attorney Peter Hobart asked Dr. Olu Fakiyesi during his questioning of Greist’s lead psychiatrist at Norristown.

“It would seem so,” Fakiyesi replied.

Greist is one of the county’s more infamous killers. In May 1978, in a drug-fueled psychotic rage, Greist went after his family members at their home in East Coventry. He stabbed his wife, Janice Greist, to death, and cut their unborn son from her body, mutilating it.

He then stabbed his grandmother with a butcher knife, and gouged the eye out of his then 5-year-old daughter. Police arrested Greist as he ran from the family’s home, covered in blood from the horrific violence he had just committed.

At a non-jury trial the next year, Greist was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity after the judge heard testimony by competing experts about his mental condition at the time of the killings. He was determined to have undergone a massive mental breakdown at the time of the killing, and thus was not criminally liable for his actions. He will never have to serve a day in prison for the killing.

But because he was deemed mentally ill and a danger to society, Greist was ordered committed to Norristown in 1980. Almost every year since, Norristown authorities have been responsible for telling a Common Pleas Court judge whether Greist’s condition has changed in such a way that his commitment is no longer necessary.

Greist has for years contended that he should not be committed to Norristown and instead should be allowed to leave a free man. Judges here have consistently ruled that he should be confined to the hospital. This year, as in the past, Fakiyesi said that Greist remains seriously mentally ill and a potential danger to society, even though his psychosis is in remission, and recommended that he be recommitted for another year.

As it has in the past, the district attorney’s office has participated in the civil case as an intervener. Hobart told Griffith that his office does so in part because of concerns for public safety in Greist’s case.

Griffith did not rule on the hospital’s commitment petition Thursday. He is expected to do so sometime later this month.

On Thursday, Hobart asked the doctor about an incident that occurred in June, when Greist returned from one of his off-grounds furloughs, during which he went to the house he shares with his wife, Frances Greist, whom he married in 2005.

According to a note Fakiyesi wrote in Greist’s patient file, Greist confronted him in a “hostile” fashion and demanded that he be discharged. Greist accused the doctor of saying that he must remain committed to “pay his dues to society,” and that Fakiyesi had told Greist that he “has to make things up to keep him” in Norristown.

Fakiyesi denied making the statements.

Hobart asked Fakiyesi if the fact that Greist believed there existed a conspiracy against him when there was none would indicate a level of paranoia on his behalf. “That would represent a break between his perception and reality, is that true?” he asked the doctor.

“I would think so,” Fakiyesi replied.

But in his questioning of the doctor, Greist suggested that the statement about “making things up” had happened during a group therapy session in front of his wife and his pastor at the Jehovah’s Witnesses temple where he and his wife worship. He also attempted to get Fakiyesi to say whether other patients at the hospital were treated differently than he in their recommitments, but was barred from proceeding by Griffith.

“This is about you, Mr. Greist, it is not about anyone else,” the judge said.

Greist, his once sandy hair now grey, dressed in a charcoal suit and lavender shirt, and using a walking cane, was representing himself at the hearing, after an attempt earlier this year to fire his court-appointed counsel, Marita Malloy Hutchinson of Westtown. He had boycotted the proceedings in 2012, saying they should be moved to federal court.

Although he threatened in the February letter to Griffith that he would not attend Thursday’s hearing, he apparently changed his mind and arrived at the county Justice Center with Fakiyesi and Norristown staff assigned to supervise him.

Although he personally asked questions of the witnesses at the hearing – including Fakiyesi; Dr. Ira Brenner, his personal psychiatrist; and Dr. Barbara Ziv, he prosecution’s psychiatrist – Hutchinson assisted him by writing questions she thought of that he could ask about his commitment.

In one exchange with Fakiyesi, Greist asked whether there had ever been any problems in the many years when he had been given off-ground privileges that would suggest that he would be a “clear and present danger” to himself and the community if he were granted release.

There had not been, Fakiyesi said, and there was a suggestion by the Greist’s treatment team that Griffith grant him expanded furloughs from the hospital then those he currently enjoys.

But in response, Hobart reminded Fakiyesi about incidents in which Greist kept an ax and a screwdriver – the weapon used in the killing – in his possession against hospital rules, and how he had once barricaded himself in his room.